Trump - Clown Genius

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Riggerjack
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by Riggerjack »

Simply put, Trump can start a global war if he wants to
Yeah, even this is harder than it looks. Think back to how big the events leading up to the Iraq invasion were. That took Congressional approval, with 9/11 as a precursor. And a military with 10 years of peace burden.

Today, there is no Congressional support. Military is busy, and has been for 15 years. And a President with plummeting approval.

A President who can issue orders and start a war, is a movie trope. It is not reality.

Worst case scenario is Trump throws a temper tantrum, orders a missle strike, and it is carried out. But from the perspective of the rest of the world, that is hardly different from the nonstop drone barrages coming from DC for the last 15 years.

Riggerjack
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by Riggerjack »

I submit that in ten years, everyone up in arms about Trump will be able to look back, and think about this as an ugly time. Yet not be able to point to any way that a Trump presidency made a tangible difference in their lives.

Clinton got the crime bill and assault weapons ban.

Bush got tax reform and ME wars.

Obama got the ACA and maintained the bush wars, with a little Clinton side action.

And those were all professionals, with a lifetime of effort, experience, and favor trading. Trump has none of these.

Trump got elected. And I think that was his great accomplishment.

bryan
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by bryan »

> That is why Trump doesn't scare me... I don't think Trump will learn to wrangle anyone before he's gone.

So someone else will fill the power void.. who? Are you afraid of them?

> So I'm relieved she lost.

Totally agree!

> And that probably helps you sleep at night.

Not really? You mean it's a nice simple model that lets the world make sense? I'm not so deluded to think so. It's apt to say the President is the CEO of the USA with some significant power to effectively steer the ship. The jury is still out on if Trump being inept is good or bad.

> But tell me, Bush Jr and Obama were about as far apart politically as you could get. What enormous changes did they make in their terms?

Bush Jr's legacy is the Patriot Act, TARP, and killing brown people. He kept the ball rolling on most everything else. Obama didn't do anything crazy (felt pretty iterative) and kept the ball rolling on most everything else. Obama looked a lot like Bush from my perspective.

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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by jacob »

Thinking in terms of distributions (e.g. Gaussians), the average person is not directly impacted much by any federal/presidential decision; this may explain why so few bother to vote. However, the tail ends can be directly affected ... and presidential decisions/statements can shift the curve a bit. The result of shifting the curve is that the number of tail-end people can increase/decrease dramatically.

For example ... think of a distribution of IQ scores. 50% will have an IQ below 100 and 2% will have an IQ above 132. If, however, the average IQ is shifted to 104, the number of people with an IQ over 132 nearly doubles! (+76%)

So while most people (between -1 and +1 sigma, that is, 84--116) won't see much difference (the difference between 100 and 104 is imperceptible), I fear that the "derived" effects down the line are material. Even if most people can't put their finger any one thing in particular, the small number of people who can and will put their finger on something may increase drastically (twice as many 132+ people is a significant effect). Conversely, if the average is lowered to 96, the number of 132+ people is almost cut in half. So apply this concept to other distributions than IQ... such as "the probability of becoming a terrorist/radicalized"(*) or "the probability of coming to the US in order to study engineering"(**) or "the probability of starting a successful business"(***). This effect is particularly strong in rare or extreme events. For example, the effect at 3sd (148) is +130% ... since these are the-worst-of-the-worst (e.g. radical terrorists) or alternatively the-best-of-the-best (e.g. world class scientists) their influence is larger than their numbers imply ...

What the exact probabilities are is a different matter, but you get the point ...

(*) It's anecdotal (from news) but there seems to be more white supremacist inspired domestic terrorism now than a few years ago?! Perhaps because the tone has shifted. People used to keep such stuff to themselves, but it has become more acceptable to share such sentiments at the mild levels for the average person (what people share on facebook for example)---this in turn changes the radical numbers in the tail.
(**) I've seen plenty of these examples with people (scientists and engineers) no longer considering the US option to be their default career-move. More STEM people are going back to their original country (or some other country) these days because they don't want to risk having the [visa] carpet pulled out from under them. Recall universities recommending that professors not risk going to international conferences ... or google recalling their employees.
(***) How much is one "Elon Musk" worth to the economy both in terms of direct consequences of businesses started, but also indirectly (suppliers, new ways of doing business, strategic importance i.e. NASA is now dependent on SpaceX). Compare to having three times as many of this type .. or alternatively half as many. Using Musk as an example because his businesses are very much contingent on a combination of easy entrepreneurship + energy-subsidies for the particular businesses he's starting.

While Trump doesn't have any legislation to his name, insofar he can talk distribution up or down by the equivalent of 4 points, which I believe he can, he does have cultural impact even if he hasn't had any political impact yet. I see three such areas, two of which have been noted by Chad already. These are highly connected in several ways:

Normalizing alternative facts: Agreeing on the existence of factual concrete reality used to be a common standard as recently as early 2016. For example, the size of the crowd during the inauguration. Back then partisans would certainly try to reframe, mislead, or emphasize certain aspects of that reality while others would frame it in different ways. However, now, it's become acceptable to create whatever reality fits one's desired narrative (the crowd size can be whatever you want to say it is ...) and if it doesn't, then it's "fake news". As a result people now live in different bubbles. More importantly, "reality-checks" have been reduced to "just your opinion, man". Such an epistemology (how we know what's true) makes it a lot easier to hold and adapt crazy beliefs because they simply go unchecked when truth no longer exists as a concept.

Some of the social media fake news seems to have been cleaned up, but the war on the media is ongoing. I don't know if this line of post-postmodern philosophy (where not even factual reality matters) will continue post-Trump. It's quite certain that most other "developed" countries (and politicians) struggle in dealing with this way of thinking. As far as I understand, people in some countries are used to not being able to entirely trust any official channels...(former eastern bloc, for example) so it could also become a more permanent thing that people just get used to.

Immigration: International visitors (tourism) are down 10-15% yoy!! Let that sink in for a moment. The US is seen as less welcoming to international visitors and immigrants overall, even for people deciding where to go on vacation. I could only find the tourist numbers but since they are closer to the average in the distribution, I suspect the numbers on the tail of the distribution are more adversely affected---think people making career choices.

Add: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/201 ... plications ... Yeah, what I expected. Note that the previous normal state of things was an overall upward trend/increase all the way around.

There are two effects here. One is homegrown terrorism (which accounts for almost all of it). Since thinking in bubbles is becoming more common, the probability of radicalization especially when coupled with the anti-Muslim rhetoric is more likely to increase than decrease. It increased in Europe and now homegrown terrorist attacks are a regular thing.

The second is that almost half of the STEM pipeline into American tech businesses, government, and academic research is fed by foreign students. About 50% of engineering doctorates are awarded to non-US persons and the majority of patents are also filed by non-US persons. The hassle and risk of all the chaotic and seemingly random visa regulations is making foreign STEM people question whether the risk (of being locked out after having gone to a conference ... or being deported after investing time and effort in a US company or university) is worth the reward of the US have better opportunities in this regard. Some of this tail-end would be seeking their fortunes in other countries. This would mean less STEM people in the US and more of them in other countries, especially China. Hence, this has implications for US competitiveness down the line.

International diplomacy and perceptions: The US is now out of the TPP and out of the Paris agreement. Other countries are moving ahead on them which then means that China has more clout being the largest economy in these treaties by far. It's notable that China is pivoting to the EU. It's also notable that US-Russia relations are cooling. Thus the US is more isolated now than it was before. I have no idea how/if they will or can be reverted post-Trump. It could also be that such treatises will simple disintegrate in the rest of the world as well. (See e.g. Brexit)

Again, the effect would be indirect. If you work for a US company that's directly affected, you might get fired or more likely, simply not hired because businesses that would have been founded never got founded in the first place. In that case, you'd probably be doing something else, like maybe working in the shale fields instead.

Again, hard to put a finger on it but definitely consequential. One might compare this to the hollowing out of the manufacturing industry: It's hard to put a finger on a specific thing to blame ... because the combined effect is a confluence of many factors. However, it's quite easy to determine whether a certain action is helping or not helping. In any case, the loss of manufacturing over the past 30-40 years did have a wide impact on the country as tail interactions (loss of entrepreneurs and industry leaders) spilled into the center of the distribution. In many ways, it resulted in Trump getting elected.

In terms of long-term effects, it depends on how the next President is perceived. Note that Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize simply for "not being GWB". During Trump's presidency it would seem that other countries would not rely on US commitments and thus maybe less or nothing at all will get started. This would be entirely in tune with America First (everybody else second). Afterwards, I don't know ... in any case, China now has four years to pursue their goals as the new dominant geopolitical player.

That's all I have for now.

The thing I haven't quite figured out yet is after about half a year of Trump as president who or which groups are winning? And what are they winning?

ThisDinosaur
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by ThisDinosaur »

jacob wrote:
Tue Jun 06, 2017 12:02 pm
"fake news". As a result people now live in different bubbles. More importantly, "reality-checks" have been reduced to "just your opinion, man". Such an epistemology (how we know what's true) makes it a lot easier to hold and adapt crazy beliefs because they simply go unchecked when truth no longer exists as a concept.
Ego posted a video a couple pages ago about how this effect was used by Putin's propagandists to discredit dissidents. Is there any evidence of a way to reverse this? Like, have any post-authoritarian eastern bloc countries found a way to get society to recognize *facts* again?

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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by fiby41 »

About 50% of engineering doctorates are awarded to non-US persons and the majority of patents are also filed by non-US persons.
Some of this tail-end would be seeking their fortunes in other countries. This would mean less STEM people in the US and more of them in other countries, especially China.
China has very weak intellectual property rights protection laws. So it's more likely for such people to stay and work (with limited resources) in their own countries, if they cannot work in US, than choose China as a destination.

US criticises China for what it used to get criticized for doing, by European powers, before the great depression. Example, entire volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica used to be plagiarized and sent off for publication. But the publishers were shrewd enough to replace the entries on free trade, from the glossy praise (in the original copies) with a list of its evils (plagiarized version.) That's how the plagiarized editions were identified.

Riggerjack
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by Riggerjack »

On the fake news topic, maybe I'm just not noticing it, or maybe I just expect it. I only check Facebook once every few months, so I would miss it. But I'm just not seeing news as any more fake since Trump took office.

I do see articles link Chad linked above, that read like:
President Donald Trump drew backlash last month after he did not explicitly endorse Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's founding document during his summit with NATO allies in Brussels. And it appears his own national security team was blindsided by it.
Which sounds really bad, unless you read it with a critical eye. The whole article was about Trump not specifically endorsing article 5, even though it was written down in his notes! And nobody knows why he went off script! And anonymous sources are alarmed! And confused! And caught off guard!

Of course, he didn't specifically endorse other parts of the treaty, and while we're at it, he didn't denounce killing puppies either.

The whole thing was just much ado about nothing. Is this news, or "news", fake news, or "FAKE NEWS"?

The news has always had a bias. I expect it. And I'm OK with it, so long as the bias is clear. If I read something on Huffington post, I will then check with fox, if I care. I'm only reading for inconsistencies at that point. Which one is fake news, because they clearly don't agree. Well, that is up to me to decide.
The thing I haven't quite figured out yet is after about half a year of Trump as president who or which groups are winning? And what are they winning?
The winners are our media. Pre Trump, mass media was losing viewers, and people expressed unauthorized opinions. Now, those same people are living in bubbles, and their unauthorized opinions can safely be dismissed, because they are listening to " fake news"

Right. Now there's real news, IE the people who agree with you, and fake news, that the deplorables listen to. Stay tuned for your authorized information. Um... :roll:

I admit it, my news consumption is very low, and I doubt it all, so maybe I just don't see this. Maybe this is a legitimate problem.

But from the outside, this looks like a shepherd playing a tape of wolves howling, to keep the flock closed up tight.

Riggerjack
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by Riggerjack »

(*) It's anecdotal (from news) but there seems to be more white supremacist inspired domestic terrorism now than a few years ago?! Perhaps because the tone has shifted.
During the Reagan/bush sr years, there was a huge homeless problem. You saw it on the news every night.

It wasn't much if a problem during the Carter and Clinton administrations. As you could tell by the drop in reporting.

But if you look at actual numbers, it has been an increasing problem thru all those administrations. But the homeless theme was played up more with the Red team in the WH.

Fake news and white supremacy seem to be the themes picked by the media for our current administration.

Is that Trump's fault or the media's. I don't know. As I said before, I know white racists. They were Trump supporters. But they haven't been more active, or vocal, to me. And mostly they are still just happy to have thrown a stick into the wheels of a machine they didn't like. The ones I talk to don't expect Trump to fix anything, they are just happy not to have a mainstream President. Maybe, again, I just don't know the right people, and there really is extra racist crap going down, but I'm more inclined to believe it is just getting highlighted in the news.

Campitor
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by Campitor »

Next time you watch a news cast, make note of the colors and music that is played and the tone of voice used to deliver the topic - it changes from topic to topic. The news manipulates the mood and tone of each delivery which affects on the audience's opinion on the topic being discussed. Print media does the same thing through their choice of words and the pictures they display. Both forms of media also manipulate the news via the topics they choose NOT to cover - what are they not telling us? Plenty of blame to go around for all news outlets - conservative and liberal.

Foreign students not applying to Universities because of Trump's travel ban - gasp! I guess colleges and businesses are completely powerless at creating incentives to lure foreign students to American academia despite travel-gate. How much of this drop is really a result of the travel ban? Does anyone really know? Does anyone have the raw numbers of foreign students, by country and year, in order to formulate an informed opinion about any drop off and its cause? Is the drop off the result of Trump or perhaps other foreign countries offering better incentives to study in their territory?

Talking about Gaussian distribution - anyone seriously ponder what may have caused the tail to swell towards Trump in the 2016 election? Was it the Russians or maybe the fact that the Dems chose to run a candidate that has polled very negatively in prior elections? How did the supposedly shrewd politician like Hillary lose to a junior senator/political neophyte like Obama in the 2008 election? How does this all square with her intentions to run for 2020? Is she guaranteeing another Republican win? Can she just go away and leave 2020 to a candidate who has a better chance of winning?

I didn't vote for Hillary or Trump. But the attacks on Trump from the left seem to me to be on the same level as the attacks on Obama from the right. It wasn't long ago when protestors carried pictures of Obama dressed like Hitler - a slander that I found equally ridiculous.

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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by Dragline »

Riggerjack wrote:
Tue Jun 06, 2017 4:09 pm
On the fake news topic, maybe I'm just not noticing it, or maybe I just expect it. I only check Facebook once every few months, so I would miss it. But I'm just not seeing news as any more fake since Trump took office.
There is probably less, because there are very few political campaigns now. DJT seems to single-handedly keep the topic alive now. The presidential news cycle has become: President watches TV news and reads New York papers, President tweets what he doesn't like about TV news and New York papers and labels negative stories as "fake", media reports on the tweets and repeats the stories in that context. Various people grumble about tweets and leak random information to press. President schedules photo op or rally, re-lives the campaign and promises new action on something "in two weeks". Meanwhile, somebody pisses off President, gets fired or neutered and is not replaced. Lather, rinse, repeat.
The thing I haven't quite figured out yet is after about half a year of Trump as president who or which groups are winning? And what are they winning?
The winners are our media.
Yes, readership, subscriptions and viewership for all media critical of the President appear to be up. The tweeting has been a boon.

But the real winners during power shifts are generally pretty quiet except within their own news eco-systems. Here, its the extractive resource industries as regulations are eased/rolled back and approvals granted for more extraction on federal lands. Coal is doing well in places like Wyoming: https://www.wyomingmining.org/news/

Dragline
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by Dragline »

Campitor wrote:
Wed Jun 07, 2017 7:41 am
Next time you watch a news cast,
Yeah, don't do that unless you can't avoid it.

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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by Dragline »

jacob wrote:
Tue Jun 06, 2017 12:02 pm

(*) It's anecdotal (from news) but there seems to be more white supremacist inspired domestic terrorism now than a few years ago?! Perhaps because the tone has shifted. People used to keep such stuff to themselves, but it has become more acceptable to share such sentiments at the mild levels for the average person (what people share on facebook for example)---this in turn changes the radical numbers in the tail.
Domestic terrorism is probably about the same, although perhaps more noticable because of the absence of other kinds of terrorism in the US recently. I have not checked the global terrorism database recently. There do seem to more incidents of racially motivated vandalism.

I have seen more alt-right trolling in groups that are ostensibly non-political, usually accompanied by Pepe-the-frog memes and hand-wringing or misplaced First Amendment arguments about who is being invited or dis-invited to speak on various college campuses.

But the US educational system has always been this kind of weird shadow-box that people use to project their views, as if whether something is taught or not taught, or said or not said, in schools or on campuses has some kind of magic, talismanic affect on society. I do not see this ingrained assumption in other countries to the extent this narrative (schools control society because all students become brain-washed zombies when they enter the building/campus) permeates the US psyche. The causal arrow actually probably points the other way (i.e., society and generational shifts affect schools more than schools affect society).

IlliniDave
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by IlliniDave »

Dragline wrote:
Wed Jun 07, 2017 8:13 am
The winners are our media.
Yes, readership, subscriptions and viewership for all media critical of the President appear to be up. The tweeting has been a boon.

But the real winners during power shifts are generally pretty quiet except within their own news eco-systems. Here, its the extractive resource industries as regulations are eased/rolled back and approvals granted for more extraction on federal lands. Coal is doing well in places like Wyoming: https://www.wyomingmining.org/news/
I agree about the media. They've dropped any pretense of avoiding sensationalism, and sensationalism at a time when emotions for many are already running high means notoriety, ratings, and $.

There are a lot of individuals who are winners in all this as well. Specifically, those of us that are "generally pretty quiet except within their own eco-systems" to modify your description slightly. If you're looking for the government to make your life or your world better (left or right) you are unlikely to be a winner in that anytime soon. If you just keep turning the crank and grinding sausage as best you can, it's still possible to progress, even if it feels like the pace is that of a snail headed uphill with a naval anchor fixed to its shell.

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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by Riggerjack »

I read your linked article. The only revelevant part was
Rules in place since the 1980s have allowed companies to sell their fuel to affiliates and pay royalties to the government on that price, then turn around and sell the coal at higher prices, often overseas. Under the now-repealed rule, the royalty rate would have been determined at the time the coal is leased, with revenue based on the price paid by an outside entity, rather than an interim sale to an affiliated company.
So, under Obama, the rules changed. Under Trump, this rule changed.

But unless you know the rates, you don't know if the government is making more money overall, or more money per unit, either way. If I were an interior Secretary, under either President, I would know that no favors or money flows to me, unless I change the rules. And, if I were changing the rules so I got more, and the government got less, I would cover myself with a story EXACTLY like this. Both times.

From that, I expect an interior Secretary made hay under Obama. Then, a different interior Secretary made hay under Trump. This is just what people go into "public service" for.

This isn't a Trump problem. This is a bureaucratic incentive problem, faced by all government, all the time.

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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by Chad »

IlliniDave wrote:
Wed Jun 07, 2017 8:52 am
If you're looking for the government to make your life or your world better (left or right) you are unlikely to be a winner in that anytime soon. If you just keep turning the crank and grinding sausage as best you can, it's still possible to progress, even if it feels like the pace is that of a snail headed uphill with a naval anchor fixed to its shell.
This is definitely true in the short-term and mostly for the medium-term. It's the long-term macro impacts that really worry me.

For instance, as noted in other posts, there is a growing apprehension from the rest of the world about the US. This is causing significantly lower numbers of foreign tourists, which is happening surprisingly fast. We are also beginning to see the decline of foreign college student interest in the US, which, as Jacob points out, would impact the economy going forward. Of course, it won't impact the economy heavily next year or even necessarily in 5 years, but each year after that this impact will get worse. This impact will be from less "Elon Musks" coming to and staying in the US and the financial impact of less foreign students at major universities.

Canada has to be loving this (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/na ... e34984977/). Do they get the next Google, Facebook, SpaceX, etc.? Maybe...maybe not, but at the least this increases their and other countries odds of stealing a new company of this level from the US.

This same downward trend could happen in up and coming industries like alternative energy, new gray area medical tech like CRISPR, etc.

Negative culture change (soft power) can be very damaging in the long-term to macro events, which will bleed down to the micro level.

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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by jacob »

Campitor wrote:
Wed Jun 07, 2017 7:41 am
Foreign students not applying to Universities because of Trump's travel ban - gasp! I guess colleges and businesses are completely powerless at creating incentives to lure foreign students to American academia despite travel-gate. How much of this drop is really a result of the travel ban? Does anyone really know? Does anyone have the raw numbers of foreign students, by country and year, in order to formulate an informed opinion about any drop off and its cause? Is the drop off the result of Trump or perhaps other foreign countries offering better incentives to study in their territory?
Yes, people know the answer to all of those complete with raw numbers. See the link I posted.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/201 ... plications

This statistics is gathered on an annual basis by several different organizations. For example, this
https://www.iie.org/en/Research-and-Ins ... nformation

Universities know rather well how much of their student body is foreign. All academic institutions I've worked at in the US (and abroad) had a specific office dealing with foreigners.---They handle the specific visa applications and provide various other services as well (like finding housing, etc.).

Here's the trend line from 1948 to 2016 (graph in link and yearly numbers table)
https://www.iie.org/Research-and-Insigh ... ent-Trends
There were exactly 4 negative years: 1971/72(-3.2%), 2003/04(-2.4%), 2004/05(-1.3%), and 2005/06(-0.05%) where the number of international students dropped yoy. All other years going back to 1948 are growth years. Final data is not in for 2016/17 yet. I note that these four years match up with Watergate and/or Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos and GulfWarII. Coincidence or just non-US universities making better offers in those years too?

Most of the 2017 news come from this survey of such organizations as well as reports from recruitment officers:
http://www.aacrao.org/docs/default-sour ... f?sfvrsn=0
and the full report
https://www.iie.org/Research-and-Insigh ... -Fall-2017

Numbers are divided into area: Middle East, India, China, Asia (ex India and China), Africa, Latin America, Canada, Europe, and Oceania.

For each of those areas, student concerns were divided into immigration (visa issues), unwelcome atmosphere, risk (fear of safety as a student), political instability in the US, economic climate in home country, and employment (opportunities in the US). This is explained in more detail in the full report.

Quoting from a summary in the report:
The most frequently noted concerns from international students and their families, as reported by institution-based professionals, include:
  • The perception of a rise in student visa denials at U.S. embassies and consulates in China, India and Nepal.
  • The perception that the climate in the U.S. is now less welcoming to individuals from other countries.
  • Concerns that benefits and restrictions around visas could change, especially around the ability to travel, re-entry after travel, and employment opportunities.
  • Concerns that the Executive Order travel ban might expand to include additional countries.
Of course, you can't do any A/B testing of one universe with Trump and another universe without Trump, so in terms of attribution, you have to rely on what those potential applicants give as reasons to their recruiters. You'll note from the data that immigration and unwelcoming atmosphere by far outscore all other concerns for most areas except India, where people are concerned about their H1B visas. It would be pretty hard to spin these universal results as every single region in the world offering better deals than the US in this particular season.

Here's an article that digs deeper into the STEM fields:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/ ... ng-schools
“It’s a precipitous drop,” says Philippe Fauchet, dean of engineering at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, of the 18% decline his department has seen in international graduate applications as last month’s deadlines passed. “Your first thought is, ‘Is it just us?’” adds Tim Anderson, engineering dean at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, where international applications for the electrical and computer engineering departments fell 30% this year. But after speaking with other deans, Anderson believes “it’s a pattern.”

Given the timing, he and others suspect the cause is President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric during the campaign and his election, rather than the White House’s 27 January travel ban against seven Muslim-majority countries, which is now in legal limbo. And the deans wonder whether the impact will ripple through the next step in the admissions process. Acceptance letters are going out in the coming weeks, Fauchet notes, “and when we make the offers, who knows how many [students] will show up?”
At Vanderbilt, the overall number of international students applying for engineering master’s programs is down 28% from 2016, and the number seeking engineering Ph.D.s dropped 11%. Dartmouth College saw a 30% plunge in international applications for its venerable master’s program in engineering management (MEM), a professional degree. “That’s never happened before” in the program’s 25-year history, says engineering dean Joseph Helble.
and of course US institutions can create incentives, but there's a problem with that too
University officials do have some options, as demand far exceeds supply at top graduate programs. Even with this year’s sharp decline, for example, Dartmouth’s Helble has almost six applicants for each one of the MEM program’s 50 slots. Such ratios give administrators the option of admitting students who previously might not have made the cut, including more domestic students.

But educators are loath to move the bar if it would lower the quality of the talent pool. Instead, some deans plan to step up the wooing of top applicants. “We’re going to do more touches,” says Anderson, such as having an adviser or a current student contact a foreign applicant who has been accepted. “We’ll be trying to reassure folks that the United States is still a free country,” he says, “and that we’d love to have them attend our institution.”
Despite lowering the quality, some may prefer that these slots primarily fall to US students ("America First") and write off the decline as just snowflake foreigners and liberal academics speculating on causes ... but the numbers show that they're acting on their perceptions and staying away. In that was the goal, it's working as desired. Mission accomplished!

Anyone who is not a potential foreign student can of course choose to write this off as irrelevant because "it doesn't affect me personally" or because "it only concerns about 100000 people who aren't even American and will go elsewhere for their studies or professional careers". I think that's short-sighted and I disagree mostly for reasons of the trickle-down effects on economic strength and national security. But that's a political discussion.

All I'm saying is that this is happening and the survey explains why these students are staying away.

Dragline
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by Dragline »

Riggerjack wrote:
Wed Jun 07, 2017 8:54 am
I read your linked article.
Yes, but there is more than one article there. The point is not one article, but that this industry views the actions of the Trump administration as a win for them and is a part answer to the "who is winning" question. I don't see any reason to disagree with their assessment -- they probably know their best interests better than you or I.

Industry/trade groups are never reliable about reporting what's necessarily good for the country, but they are always reliable about reporting on what's good for their own best interests.

IlliniDave
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by IlliniDave »

Chad wrote:
Wed Jun 07, 2017 9:32 am
This is definitely true in the short-term and mostly for the medium-term. It's the long-term macro impacts that really worry me.

For instance, as noted in other posts, there is a growing apprehension from the rest of the world about the US. This is causing significantly lower numbers of foreign tourists, which is happening surprisingly fast. We are also beginning to see the decline of foreign college student interest in the US, which, as Jacob points out, would impact the economy going forward. Of course, it won't impact the economy heavily next year or even necessarily in 5 years, but each year after that this impact will get worse. This impact will be from less "Elon Musks" coming to and staying in the US and the financial impact of less foreign students at major universities.

Canada has to be loving this (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/na ... e34984977/). Do they get the next Google, Facebook, SpaceX, etc.? Maybe...maybe not, but at the least this increases their and other countries odds of stealing a new company of this level from the US.

This same downward trend could happen in up and coming industries like alternative energy, new gray area medical tech like CRISPR, etc.

Negative culture change (soft power) can be very damaging in the long-term to macro events, which will bleed down to the micro level.
I suppose we'll have to see 10 years from now how much of this pans out. I've heard complaints of waning foreign tourists to the US for over a year now, the culprit generally seen as the surge in relative strength of the USD making travel costs to the US jump. But that potential cause-effect chain is rather dull. Perhaps it factors into education in the US too. It would actually be better if it was all due to Trump because he'll be gone eventually and people find out the the US really is not awash with roving bands of *-ist/*-ophobe thugs, buckets of deplorables, and a seething underbelly of ignorance between the mountain ranges.

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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by jacob »

@iDave - International visitors have been increasing since 2009. Visitor trends ("business or pleasure") generally go with the strength of the global economy. Visitors also bottomed out in 2003. Tourism dropping now is unusual to say the least because the global economy is not in a recession.
See graph at http://tinet.ita.doc.gov/view/f-2000-99 ... rivals.pdf
See record spending for 2016 here since the graph didn't cover it:
https://skift.com/2017/02/28/internatio ... d-in-2016/

The DXY (USD basket) quickly rose about 15% in spring 2015 and has stayed within a 5% band until today.
See market data at http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/dxy

Despite the rise of the USD since two years ago, last year (2016) had a record number of international tourist spending and a record number of international student applications. Also note that student application numbers DO NOT track with the visitor numbers and so are unrelated (the DXY is not a latent variable).

It probably really is the Trump-effect.

Keep in mind that what most people outside the US see (aside from movies and computer games which everybody like) and judge America according to its foreign policy and what the President says and does because that's what they see and hear on TV, facebook, and twitter. It is of course not fair to judge an entire country and its culture and people by the person elected to represent them, but that's what people overseas do and the numbers aren't pretty. I don't know how many times I've had to explain [to friends & family outside the US] that the US has not been overrun by roving bands of deplorables, etc. and that for the most part life goes on as normal and people are still friendly and welcoming, etc. Yet that is not the impression that many foreigners now have.(*)

The international effect is thus somewhat buffered by foreigners who either live or have lived in the US and thus have real life experience and relations with the US and Americans in general making them able to provide some nuance and detail to those living elsewhere and only see the tweets, etc. This soft-power has a positive effect on national security in the way I linked to above (I highly recommend reading it, because I've seen this effect a lot(**).) The hard-power would be in creating bans or walls, etc. This could also work. These are two very different ways of solving the same problem and which is preferred is a political discussion.

(*) One might compare it a bit to how dangerous people who don't or have never lived in Chicago think Chicago is insofar they judge the city by what they see on TV.

(**) Whenever I've worked (physics, finance) it's been in environments with 40-90% internationals typically from all over the world (1-2 from each nation in a group or division). This incidentally is the default environment---I didn't deliberately seek out such environments. One learns a lot more about a country from talking to people who come from that place than news reports about what their leader did or said. I'm obviously in favor of promoting as much international experience at that level as possible. Overseas people studying or working for a time here. Americans doing the same in other countries. I even reverted my stance on travel-tourism even though I think that working with people in and of other countries builds stronger relationships than just visiting their hotels and restaurants.

Smashter
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by Smashter »

Dragline wrote:
Wed Jun 07, 2017 8:48 am
I do not see this ingrained assumption in other countries to the extent this narrative (schools control society because all students become brain-washed zombies when they enter the building/campus) permeates the US psyche. The causal arrow actually probably points the other way (i.e., society and generational shifts affect schools more than schools affect society).
I have been out of college for almost 10 years, yet to this day my dad assumes many of my actions are shaped by the "liberal brainwashing" I got in college. If I told him that during my freshman year we were tied down, A Clockwork Orange-style, and forced to watch Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", he would not think it too far-fetched.

In reality, my school had many prominent, right-leaning professors. My experience was very dependent on what sort of classes and clubs I sought out.

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